


The Ghost and Sir James Lester

by fredbassett



Series: Ghost Ryan [5]
Category: Primeval
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-08 04:22:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18887101
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fredbassett/pseuds/fredbassett
Summary: A late night talk helps to put things in perspective for Ryan.





	The Ghost and Sir James Lester

You work too hard.”

Lester heard the words inside his head rather than with his ears, which told him all he needed to know about the person who had just passed judgment on him.

He looked up from the ever-growing mound of paper on this desk to find his black-clad, but still distinctly insubstantial former head of security standing in the doorway of his office.

“So my ex-wife used to tell me,” he said. “Is it too much to ask you to rattle some chains to warn me of your arrival?”

Ryan ignored his comment. “She was right.”

“Was yours right when she told you the same thing?”

“Probably,” Ryan admitted. “But I was a soldier when she married me, so she knew what she was getting into.”

“And I was an ambitious, career-minded little scrote from an inner city comprehensive with a first class honours degree in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from an exceedingly snobbish Oxford college. That should have been enough of a warning light. But does anyone truly know what they’re getting into when they start a relationship, Ryan?”

“No, I don’t suppose they do.” The ghost’s words seemed to carry the weight of the world with them. Ryan’s face was sombre and Lester knew that, unusually for him, the soldier wanted to talk about something more than just the performance of the team on the latest anomaly shout..

Lester had become used to sharing his office after hours with a spectral visitor. Long before Ryan had finally come clean about his shadowy half-life to Connor and other ARC employees, Lester had shared many a late night conversation with the former special forces captain. Their talks had ranged from discussions about how to stop the endless rows over who had left a culture more ancient than China in the break room fridge to in-depth dissections of the latest cock-ups perpetrated by a government that seemed determined to take the entire country to hell in a handcart.

Amongst other things, they’d discovered a shared hatred of jazz and bluegrass music, unexpected agreement on the fact that Black Sabbath’s Paranoid was an excellent track to play at a drunken party, a mutual dislike of sushi (Ryan preferred his fish battered with chips and Lester liked his food cooked) and the same taste in malt whisky. Marriages had been built on less secure foundations, as they both knew to their cost.

“Shall we adjourn to the break room so I can drink coffee as black as the Home Secretary’s heart and you can sniff disconsolately at the fumes, or do you think you can solidify long enough to down a glass of my 25-year-old Lagavulin?”

A swift grin lightened the serious expression on Ryan’s face. “I’d walk on hot coals for that.”

“No pyrotechnics, thank you, Captain, I’m still having to answer searching questions on the size of our budget for replacement electrical items, for which I hold you entirely responsible.”

“I haven’t blown up a kettle or a strip-light for weeks.” To Lester’s amusement, Ryan sounded faintly aggrieved.

Lester retrieved two cut-glass tumblers and the relevant bottle from the cabinet in the corner of his room and poured two generous measures of the peaty spirit. He placed one on his desk and one on the coffee table next to the black leather sofa on which Ryan habitually sprawled during their nocturnal conversations. As a sign that he had now given up any attempt at continuing work, Lester removed his jacket, draped it carefully over the back of a spare chair, and even went so far as to fractionally loosen his tie before retiring to his own chair and resting his feet on a pulled-out desk drawer. It was as casual as he cared to get in the office.

One moment Ryan was standing by the door and the next he was sitting in the sofa with no visible transition between the two. A slight prickle ran up and down Lester’s spine. He’d spent enough time in Ryan’s company to be unafraid of the man and what he represented, but there were times when such a visible reminder of his otherworldly nature was still enough to make Lester feel like someone had walked over his own grave.

Lester lifted the glass to his lips and inhaled the distinctive aroma. He’d often likened imbibing this particular brand of malt to the act of drinking the smell of a peat fire, and it always seemed wholly at odds with the glass and chrome interior of the building that now housed the anomaly project, an earthy scent in a wholly artificial environment.

As the liquid brought welcome warmth to a body that had indeed spent too long hunched over a desk staring either at a computer screen or a glut of paper files, he watched Ryan gradually become more solid. The captain reached out with long fingers to the glass, every fibre of his currently incorporeal being focussed on the deceptively simple act of picking something up.

With startling abruptness, the sofa suddenly dipped under Ryan’s weight as he achieved enough solidity to lift the glass to his lips, a look of quiet triumph on his face.

“Don’t break the glass,” Lester commented. “If you do, you’ll be drinking the next one out of a plastic cup, and I can assure you it will taste nowhere near as good.”

“I’ve drunk it out of a tin mug in a sangar in Helmand Province,” Ryan commented. “It tasted pretty bloody good then. More so because we weren’t meant to have alcohol there at the time, but fortunately Lyle’s never been very good at following orders.”

Lester waited for Ryan to put the glass back on the table, taking no unnecessary chances with the ghost’s new-found control, before he asked, “What brings you in here on a quiet night?”

“It’s Becker’s night off,” Ryan said, as though that explained everything.

Lester resisted the urge to do anything as unsubtle as sighing. He debated what approach to take to the evident complexity of Ryan’s private life and decided not to bother beating about the bush.

“And two’s company, three’s a crowd?”

“You could say that,” Ryan said, surprising Lester by retaining enough control over himself to pick up the glass again and take another mouthful.

“I could, but it’s not what I say that matters, is it? What do they say?”

“Connor says he wants me with them and Becker will do anything to keep Connor happy.”

Lester drew in a long, slow breath, and decided to keep things simple. “Connor was inconsolable when you died and distraught when he believed he’d lost you a second time.”

Seeing one’s lover torn apart by a Dimetrodon – or indeed by anything out of the Bumper Book of Things with Excessive Dental Arrangements – would be enough to unsettle anyone, and Connor Temple had been more than a little fragile since Ryan’s original death in the Forest of Dean, even though he had done his best to conceal the relationship from as many people as possible. Facing the loss of Ryan a second time had nearly torn the brilliant but somewhat eccentric young man apart.

Ryan closed his eyes for a moment, and Lester could see lines on the man’s face that had not been there when the captain had accompanied Cutter on their ill-fated trip to the Permian.

“I don’t know how long I’ll be able to stay for him.” His words were almost inaudible, a return to the light brush of a night owl’s wing across the edge of Lester’s consciousness, rather than a normal auditory experience. “I don’t even know what I’m doing here.”

“What does Cutter say?” Lester knew Cutter had been conducting – or attempting to conduct – a whole battery of tests, but he’d not yet deigned to report on the results.

Ryan shrugged helplessly and held his glass out for a refill. “He thinks the magnetic field of the anomaly did something to anchor me to this world. My physical presence is stronger when I’ve been exposed to the magnetic field of the anomalies, but on the down side, strong emotions will cause the link to break.” He sounded like he was directly quoting Cutter. “I seem to give off my own magnetic field at times, which is why I’ve got the kiss of death on anything electrical if I lose control.”

“And when Connor nearly drowned, you were able to channel the electrical energy from the anomaly flare to kick-start his heart.” Lester commented. In response to Ryan’s look of surprise, he added acerbically, “I do read the bloody reports, Ryan. Contrary to popular opinion, I don’t just ask for them for the fun of it, I can assure you. The indignities Captain Becker is capable of inflicting on the humble comma don’t bear thinking about. And don’t even get me started on his love-affair with the hapless semi-colon.”

Lester affected a shudder for theatrical effect in an attempt to lighten the mood, but it had little effect on Ryan’s apparent gloom. As a precaution, Lester saved the document he’d been working on and shut down his computer, something he used to do at the first hint of Ryan’s presence, although he’d been doing that less and less recently, a sign of the captain’s greater control over his own impulses.

Ryan nodded. “Ditzy said it had the same effect on Connor as shocking him with a defibrillator.” He thought for a moment and added, “Did I massacre punctuation as badly as Becker?”

“On the grounds that no one appears to have introduced you to the comma, or indeed to the semi-colon, for which I am profoundly thankful, I can assure you that your reports were by no means as reprehensible, but I do wonder what the pair of you learnt at Sandhurst.”

“How to strip down an SA80 in the dark and reassemble it in less than a minute, amongst other things.”

Lester sniffed. “Very useful, I’m sure.” He finally gave in to the almost over-whelming urge to sigh and found it nearly as satisfying as a damn good fart. “Ryan, I don’t profess to understand what the hell is going on, and I’m not a religious man so I can’t look for any explanations in that direction, but Connor loves you, you patently obviously love him, so I can only assume that the problem is likely to go by the name of Captain Hilary Becker. Am I right?”

It was Ryan’s turn to sigh. “No, not really. Becker has done everything he can to help, even down to letting me…” he hesitated before continuing in a rush, the words almost running together in his haste to be rid of them, “…use his body to make love to Connor.” He stared resolutely at the floor whilst delivering that statement, so fortunately didn’t see both Lester’s eyebrows collide with his hairline at terminal velocity.

“He did what?” Lester said weakly.

“I’ve got no bloody idea how we manage it,” Ryan said. “But we’ve done it more than once now. I sort of end up inside his body, pulling the strings like it’s my puppet. It happened the first time when we were trying to drag Connor out of the water when the warehouse floor fell through.” A frown crossed his face. “Becker was afraid I was going to kick him out of his own body but he still went ahead anyway.”

“Could you have done that?”

“I’ve no bloody idea,” Ryan admitted. “But I wouldn’t… that would have been wrong.”

And using someone else’s body to make love to your boyfriend wasn’t? Lester was now well out of his depth, but then so was Ryan.

“Does Becker feel the same way about Connor as you do?”

Ryan nodded. “He tried to hide it at first, but he couldn’t keep me from knowing. I can see his thoughts when I’m hitching a ride in his body.”

“I can see that’s not necessarily convenient,” Lester acknowledged. “How does Connor feel?”

“He’s got feelings for Becker but he doesn’t want to admit it for in case I feel pushed out.”

Lester poured another large measure of alcohol into each of their glasses. “How very… complicated.”

Ryan nodded gloomily. “That’s why I thought they needed some space.”

“Where do you go when you’re not here… or there?” Lester asked, finally giving into to curiosity on something that had puzzled him ever since Ryan had started there nocturnal visits.”

“I’m always somewhere,” Ryan said. He looked like he’d never actually thought of the question in those terms before. “If I wasn’t here or with Connor I’d probably be getting some sleep in one of the bunkrooms.”

“So there’s no sitting around on clouds playing harps?”

“Do I look like a bloody angel?”

Lester had to admit that he didn’t. “So there’s no hellfire and damnation either?”

“For all I know there might be. Cutter’s not even totally sure I’m really dead.”

“We buried you, Ryan. I sincerely hope we weren’t wrong about you being dead.”

Ryan raised the glass of whisky in salute and drained the last of the contents. “If I’m dead how do you explain this?” He shifted sideways on the sofa. “It’s not running through me. This isn’t some sort of illusion.”

“So why do you need Becker’s body to… ?” Lester’s question trailed off. He wasn’t exactly comfortable quizzing Ryan on his sex life and no doubt it showed. He also suppressed any urge to enquire into Ryan’s toilet habits. That really would be a question too far.

“Because when I get too…” Ryan hesitated, groped for the right word and finally settled on, “…emotional, I can’t sustain it. Disappearing at the wrong point would give a whole new bloody meaning to coitus interruptus.”

“I suppose it would,” Lester said thoughtfully. “I think you’re just going to have to follow your instinct on this, Ryan. I’m not sure I’m being much help.”

One of Ryan’s rare smiles banished the solemnity from his face. “You’re not doing too badly. You’ve been remarkably forbearing considering how many times I fried your computer in the early days.”

Lester laughed. “Connor had no idea why I kept going through so many hard drives.”

“And Norman wasn’t too impressed when he had to keep changing your strip lights, either. Maybe I should have just stayed away. That way we wouldn’t be in this mess now.”

“Don’t be bloody ridiculous,” Lester snapped. “What would you have done instead? Haunted the Forest of Dean? Scared a few stray sheep?”

“It’s not just about me, though, is it?”

“No, it’s about the three of you. But as you said yourself, Connor doesn’t want to lose you and Becker’s old enough to make his own decisions.”

“He’s 26, barely out of short trousers.”

“He’s old enough to know what he wants. Don’t underestimate him.”

Ryan sighed and Lester felt the temperature in the room drop slightly.

“You’re doing the ghost thing again,” he pointed out.

“Sorry.”

“You’ve been solid for nearly 15 minutes,” Lester remarked, deeming a change of subject to be timely. “How long is your record?”

“Twelve minutes 43 seconds. In lab conditions with Cutter asking me questions.”

“So talking clearly helps. Go to them, Ryan. They’re the people you should be talking to.”

“If I do, will you get some sleep or just turn your computer back on?”

“I’ll go to one of the bunkrooms and get some sleep. Is it a deal?” If truth be told, he was far too tired now to continue working, and the whisky had blunted the edges of the day’s concerns enough for him to be able to get some rest.

“It’s a deal.” Ryan stood up and with great care picked up the glass and placed it on Lester’s desk. “Sixteen minutes and counting,” he said with satisfaction and promptly vanished.

Lester stared at the empty space for a moment before murmuring, “Good luck, Captain.”

* * * * *

Ryan stood outside the door of Becker’s flat wondering whether he should try to ring the doorbell or simply appear inside and hope he didn’t disturb anything too intimate. He reached out with his right hand and failed to make contact with the button of the bell.

It looked like he was going to have to rattle some chains or something.

* * * * *

The television was on, the sound turned low as David Attenborough got up close and personal with yet more unsuspecting creatures in Africa.

Becker was sprawled on the sofa, eyes closed, listening to Connor chuntering away happily, whilst reading a comic, about the latest modifications he was planning for the handheld anomaly detection devices. Connor rarely – if ever – did only one thing at once.

Ryan smiled. Connor was well inside Becker’s personal space and both of them seemed perfectly relaxed. Becker was drinking from a can of lager, then passing it over to Connor who would take a mouthful and pass the can back. It seemed more intimate than if they’d been touching.

Watching them like that seemed far too close to eavesdropping, but Ryan was unsure how to go about announcing his presence without resorting to chain-rattling for real. Fortunately, after being initially somewhat slow on the uptake where Ryan’s presence was concerned, his young lover was now extremely attuned to whatever atmospheric fluctuations signalled Ryan’s arrival, even if he was no longer in danger of shattering the TV screen.

Connor looked up and his face broke into a wide smile. “Ryan! I was wondering when you were going to come back.” He scooted closer to Becker on the sofa, leaving room for Ryan next to him.

Ryan forced himself to relax, knowing that he was most likely to be able to achieve some solidity that way, although it wasn’t an invariable rule of thumb. There were times when that particular ability could also be driven by need; on one occasion the need to comfort Connor when he’d been holding one of Ryan’s old sweaters to his face and sobbing as though his heart was breaking.

“You’re looking thoughtful,” Connor said, correctly divining his mood as well as his presence.

Ryan turned sideways and faced both of them. “Becker, you’ve done more for us that anyone has any right to expect and more than I can ever repay.”

Becker looked uncomfortable, but he met Ryan’s eyes, a very slight smile quirking his lips. “You’ve had a front row seat inside my head, Ryan. You know bloody well how I feel.”

“Playing three in a bed is a lot to ask of anyone, Becker. You deserve more than that.”

Becker looked at Connor, his eyes guarded, but he was unable to keep an expression of almost painful hope out of them. “That’s up to Connor. He knows how I feel about him.”

Ryan could manage to repress a grin, despite the situation. “You’ve talked about feelings? Bloody hell.”

Becker met his eyes and for a moment amusement had the upper hand. “God, no. I might like to keep my hair tidy, but that doesn’t mean I can talk about stuff like that. We’ve skirted around the subject just like a couple of normal blokes. But Connor’s not stupid.”

“Hello?” Connor waved a hand in front of both their noses. “I am still in the room, you know. Jesus, you two are a bloody nightmare at times. Tom, Becker was there for me when I thought I’d lost you. Like everyone else, he tried to shield me from the knowledge that my dead boyfriend was lurking around in the bogs scaring the shit out of people.” A swift grin lit his face. “Quite literally in a few cases, from what I hear. All he’s ever tried to do is make sure I don’t get hurt. He’s never asked anything from me in return. But I care for him, I really do.” Connor slid his hand into Becker’s and reached out for Ryan’s hand, pulling it to rest on top of theirs. Ryan wasn’t quite solid and he knew that his touch would almost certainly be raising some goosebumps.

Ryan smiled at the intensity of his lover’s speech. “I know that, Conn, and believe me, I’m fine with it, I really am.” He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to Connor’s lips. “And I managed to stay solid for just over 16 minutes when I was talking to Lester tonight.”

“So does this mean I can have a proper cuddle from you in bed tonight?”

“You can have a proper cuddle from both of us,” Ryan said quietly. He held Becker’s eyes and asked, “Is that what you’d like as well?”

Becker nodded.

Connor jumped up, his expression as eager as a puppy about to be taken for a walk. He held his hands out, one to each of them. Ryan could feel his control starting to waver but with an effort of will, he managed to maintain his grip on Connor’s warm flesh. Ryan knew from Cutter’s experiments that even when he appeared to be solid, his body temperature was lower than normal by a couple of degrees. He’d had to work hard to avoid the threat of Ditzy’s prized rectal thermometer but a tendency to disappear whenever it was brandished in his direction had been enough to save him from that particular indignity.

Once in the bedroom, Connor pulled his clothes off with his usual lack of ceremony, scattering items of clothing all around the room, as though a mini tornado had picked up the contents of the laundry basket and spun it vigorously. Unsurprisingly, Becker was slower and more methodical, folding everything neatly, even retrieving Connor’s socks and underwear and dropping them along with his own into the basket in the corner of the room.

Clothes were something that puzzled Ryan a lot. He seemed to be doomed to spend eternity – or however long he was going to be trapped like this – preserved like a fly in amber, always wearing the same black combat uniform that he’d had on during the ill-fated expedition with Cutter to the Permian. He’d tried a few of his own experiments in moments of private solidity, removing articles of clothing and discovering that while he remained corporeal, so did they, but if he faded, they did the same, and when he then reappeared, he was once again wearing that same article of clothing, but with no memory of having put it back on again. There was clearly a hell of a lot more going on than simply magnetic fields and electrical impulses, but he was damned if he knew what.

But on the upside, he never seemed to need to change his underwear or socks, which was more than could be said for Connor, who had a habit of jumping out of bed whenever they were on the receiving end of an anomaly shout and pulling on the first items of clothing that came to hand. Becker’s habit of consigning Connor’s discarded underwear to the laundry basket immediately was a very sound idea that Ryan wished he’d thought of earlier.

Keeping as tight a rein on his emotions as he could, Ryan undressed quickly and slipped into bed. Connor was in the middle, with Becker on the other side. His young lover promptly wound himself around Ryan like an over-excited anaconda, kissing him with thinly-disguised desperation. Ryan kissed him back, his hands roaming over Connor’s body, enjoying the warmth of his skin whilst at the same time wondering how the hell Connor could do this knowing that Ryan was likely to vanish into thin air at any minute.

Connor pulled back for a moment, unshed tears glistening in his eyes in the light of the bedside lamp. “Stop thinking, Tom, please. I know you don’t understand any of this and nor do I, but please just be happy with what we’ve got.”

“I am happy, Conn, very happy. Trust me on that.”

And after that there were no words, just urgent kisses. While he was still in possession of coherent thoughts, Ryan stretched out his hand and pulled Becker close to them. Connor half-turned, his lips capturing Becker’s mouth in the same sort of passionate kiss he’d just been delivering to Ryan. Becker responded and for a while it became hard to know whose hands and mouths were where. They had issues with extra arms, to everyone’s amusement, and at one point all three of them nearly ended up on the floor, but laughter turned aside any awkwardness.

Connor rolled onto his back, doing his best to pull Ryan with him, but his hands met nothing more than empty air, and happiness faded as though a switch had been flipped off.

Becker propped himself up on one elbow, the unspoken invitation clear in his eyes, but Ryan shook his head. “Make love to him without me, Becker.”

“Then stay with us,” Becker said. “We need to know you’re all right with this.”

“I’m all right with this,” Ryan said as he found himself sitting on the edge of the bed, incorporeal and once more fully dressed.

As he’d commented earlier to Lester, coitus interruptus was certainly problematic, but when he watched Becker take his place, kissing the tears from Connor’s cheeks and later bringing him to a gasping climax, Ryan was untroubled by any thoughts of jealousy, and simply pleased that Becker had been able to take his place when his grip on his own control had become too precarious for their contact to be sustained.

It was the first time that Becker had made love to Connor whilst in possession of his own body. He was a considerate lover, putting Connor’s pleasure above his own, before he finally pressed his face into the hollow of Connor’s neck and thrust through his own orgasm as Connor bucked against him, legs tightly wound around Becker’s waist.

When they finally disentangled themselves, Connor cuddled against Becker, but looked up, his eyes searched for Ryan and lit with quiet pleasure when he found him still sitting on the edge of the bed. Ryan reached out and brushed his fingertips over Connor’s dark hair lying in disarray on Becker’s muscular shoulder.

“I’m glad Becker’s here for you, Conn,” he said quietly. “And maybe one night I’ll be able to stay long enough to make love to you myself.”

Connor smiled widely, wearing his heart on his sleeve the way he always did.

Ryan waited until he was sure his young lover had finally slipped into sleep before standing up. He’d watched them sleep before, but tonight he felt secure enough to be able to leave them alone. They deserved that courtesy.

Becker looked up at him, his eyes questioning. “Ryan?”

Ryan held Becker’s eyes with his and said, in a voice that only Becker could hear, “If I don’t come back one day, promise me you’ll look after him.”

Becker nodded, his hazel eyes sombre. “I promise,” he said, pressing a light kiss to Connor’s sleeping cheek.

Ryan smiled. He knew he could rely on that promise.

* * * * *

At 6.30am, the break room smelt of floor polish and detergent, courtesy of the ARC’s long-suffering cleaning staff, who had now become somewhat easier to retain since Ryan was no longer haunting the toilets with such monotonous regularity. Lester had slept surprisingly well, despite the too-narrow bed, and a warm shower had felt him feeling ready to face the day, but first he needed coffee. In industrial quantities, and at that time in the morning he couldn’t rely on his personal assistant to pander to his needs.

The large container of coffee labelled: Touch this on pain of your P45 stood untampered with on the shelf, the level exactly where he had last left it. Lester heaped more spoonfuls of it than were strictly necessary into the cafetière, poured on the water and stood back, savouring the aroma.

A slight movement of the air behind him, despite the fact that he had closed the door to the corridor behind him, alerted Lester to a presence other than his own in the room. From somewhere he heard the faint but unmistakeable rattle of chains.

He turned around, a slight smile on his face. “Very good, Captain. May I offer you a cup of this particularly excellent brew?”

Ryan grinned at him and Lester was pleased to see that his expression was lighter than it had been the previous night. “You can try,” he said leaning back against the wall.

“Do I take it that whatever happened last night might have proved to be a step closer to a satisfactory resolution of your convoluted personal life?”

“Do you practise sentences like that in a mirror?” Ryan asked, with a slight twitch of one eyebrow.

“I’ll do the sarcasm, thank you, Captain. I think you’ll find a clause somewhere in your contract of employment that allows me to interrogate you on such matters.”

“I didn’t realise I had a contract of employment.”

Lester arched on eyebrow. “Really? How very remiss of me. I’ll have Miss Wickes draw one up. After all, I presume you will be staying, won’t you?” He slowly depressed the plunger on the coffee, poured it into two mugs and handed one to Ryan.

Ryan smiled and took it from him. “I hope so, sir. I very much hope so.”


End file.
